


call me when it rains

by athousandcities



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, FP tries so hard, Riverparents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 09:57:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15289035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athousandcities/pseuds/athousandcities
Summary: Snapshot of the night Betty and Jughead left for college, leaving their parents in a frazzled, post-nostalgic daze. Some habits just don’t die.





	call me when it rains

**Author's Note:**

> Little preface, everything exists in the canon (Black Hood included, though isn't dwelled upon much). Assume enough time has gone by for Betty and Jug to graduate. :)

            He gets the call around three in the morning, having fallen asleep on the dingy couch in the newly empty trailer to the sound of the rain. It hits the siding and rattles the windows, the roof, and FP groans that he can already here the puddle collecting in the kitchen where the ceiling leaks. Still dressed in his white button down and apron from Pop’s, he sighs. He must have fallen asleep on accident again. The storm is loud enough that he almost misses his phone buzzing away on the carpet, but just almost.

            _“FP.”_ A small voice whines out his name on the other line.

            “Ali?” He sits up now, rubbing his eyes with his free hand. His ex-lover had been dropping by unannounced lately, but he couldn’t remember the last time she had called in the middle of the night. They must have been teenagers.

            “I haven’t heard from Betty yet,” Alice’s voice is muffled and her tone laden with worry as she rambles on, “I don’t know if she and Jughead stopped for the night, I hope they did, New York City is just so far away, and I’m worried they got lost or into an accident and I just don’t know why no one is calling me back or even just a _text_ \- “

            “Hey, hey, slow down,” he tries to sound soothing but knows he was never great at it, “they’re smart kids, I’m sure they just pulled off somewhere to rest. They’re okay.”

            It’s been a whirlwind of a week for both of them. Jughead had significantly less luggage to pack for college, but Alice meanwhile had been calling him daily from different shopping centers to ask if she should pick anything up for Jughead because _you know Betty just_ needs _a new comforter for those weirdly shaped mattresses,_ needs _an oil diffuser in case her roommates are the low life stoner type—remember how he was back in the day?—, Betty needs a set of plates and bowls for Ramen noodles, needs new stationary, and should she get an EpiPen because what if Betty discovers she has new allergies? Does that happen? She should pick one up just in case,_ and so on. There’s no use arguing with her, so he tells Pop he’s on a lunch break to let her rant and ramble off her shopping list. He knows how flighty Alice gets when she’s stressed, had ever since she was the little girl running laps around the trailer park when things were especially bad at home. He supposes it was one thing when she was the one escaping off to college, but a completely different story now that it’s Betty leaving the nest. It’s harder for FP to conceptualize that his own son is gone too; perhaps this is why he awoke fully dressed on the couch, subconsciously waiting up for Jughead.

            Alice coughs over the phone, a dry and throaty sound harsh to his ears. Sniffling once, then twice, she doesn’t speak.

            “Ali?” He asks, awake now.

            “The house is just so _quiet_.” She breathes after another pause, “Everyone’s left me.”

            FP sighs, taking off his bowtie and hat to grab his jacket. “I’m on the way.”

\--

            The clanking of his motorcycle probably woke up half of her neighbors, but Alice can’t bring herself to care. She goes out to meet him in her bathrobe and slippers, feeling the last drizzle of rain hit her skin. The beginnings of autumn chill the air, lingering in the breeze and whipping her blonde hair across her face it. She didn’t check, but can guess what she looks like _—_ tearstained, hair half up, mascara smudged. Nothing FP hasn’t seen before.

            “Hi.” She offers him a small smile as he joins her in the driveway, immediately wrapping her in a leather embrace. Alice closes her eyes to receive a kiss on the forehead, inhaling his scent: the faintest trace of musky cologne and grease. “You haven’t changed your clothes.”

            “I haven’t.” FP smirks and takes a step back. The streetlamps glow in her eyes, thoroughly bloodshot, and make them look electric. The storm has lessened, but he still feels the rain soaking through her robe. “Gonna invite me in?”

            Stopping only to role her eyes, Alice takes his hand and leads him inside. The house is empty in a way he hasn’t seen it: several pictures are missing along with a few chairs and light fixtures; the dining room table is gone and replaced with a smaller circular one; the rug is still missing, a reminder of when Chic had entered their lives. FP assumes that Hal was liberal in his selection of their belongings after the divorce a month ago. He didn’t know you could claim so much furniture from prison either. Alice hasn’t talked about it, instead she just appears on his doorstep at least once a week with a need in her eyes and once he’s filled it, she leaves just the same. With the exception of her fervent shopping trip rants, she doesn’t seem to be saying much to FP at all these days, doesn’t come into Pop’s like she used to either. He too has been caught up with Jughead’s leaving for college, in fairness. He never went to college, never left the Southside even, so when his son ran inside the trailer shaking a letter from Colombia University, FP had to go to the library and look up where it even was on the map. He tried to be excited, be helpful, be discerning, but he supposes they both knew he doesn’t have a clue how to support Jughead in this uncharted territory. And Alice was in no place for him to be asking her advice. In the end, he did the best he could yesterday in helping Jughead load four boxes of belongings into the trunk, clap his son on the back, and send him over to get Betty for their journey. The silence in his trailer when FP got off work was bad enough, he doesn’t know how Alice is going to live in her significantly larger house without company either.

            Shrugging off her rain-soaked satin robe, Alice makes her way to the kitchen where a single light over the sink is lit and begins lining up produce from the fridge wordlessly. Her posture lightens and her shoulders ease away from her neck as her hands move across the counter cutting things, dressing things, searching for pans and bowls. Stress baking is a habit she developed on the Northside, finally having enough money to buy more than three ingredients at once, but he knows the determined look in her eye nonetheless and thinks better than to disturb her.

            “When was the last time you ate chicken that wasn’t in deep-fried, finger form?” she asks without looking up from the cutting board.

            “I—” he pauses. He can’t remember.

            Alice only smiles.

            They eat together, standing on opposite sides of the counter with paper plates in front of them and the silver forks used only of Cooper family Thanksgivings. She doesn’t suppose she’ll be invited this year, Alice had said, so might as well make use. FP had reached over to stroke her hand when she’d said this, but she quickly filled it with her fork and stuffed her mouth full of grilled chicken and broccoli to avoid conversation. He remembers her doing this when they were young, coming across the park to his trailer with bruises on her little arms and going right to his cabinets where the Count Chocula was. She used to use all their milk and put the carton back in the fridge empty, but FP always told his dad that he was the one who finished it and took whatever consequences. Count Chocula was replaced with marijuana when they were in eighth grade, and he supposes that these days, it had made its way to being healthy dinners at almost four in the morning. When Alice starts clearing their plates with shaking hands and FP finds that he is afraid to touch her for the first time, afraid this might be the incident she breaks, and he says nothing.

            She plugs the drain of the sink with a sharp metal _clink_. Turns the hot water on and lets it steam, throwing in soap and the forks. She stops, sighs.

            “I don’t know if I need to polish them.”

            “What are you talking about?” He comes around the counter, leaning against the sink. “What, the forks?”

            “They were Hal’s grandmother’s. What if he asks for them back? I don’t know if _Betty_ might want them someday, or _Polly_ , even _—_ ” Alice chokes on the tears trailing down her cheeks, “I don’t know what to do with myself, FP.”

            He wraps his arms around her a second time, one hand around her waist and another holding the back of her head. The soft _shh_ ing noises are coming from him, he realizes after a second, feeling her shake with every inhale. _Ali, Ali, shh,_ is all he can say, so he makes it a chant. _Ali, Ali, Ali_. She chokes out one last mention of silver polish but eventually finds air in her lungs, standing up straighter and moving his hand out of her hair.

            “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you all the way over here just to be like this.” Alice shakes her head. “It’s so late, I just haven’t been sleeping.”

            “Don’t do that.” He lifts his hand to her cheek to wipe the tears away, “After Gladys left everything was… and with Jug gone too now--” he shakes his head, unable to be articulate the exact silence, “Listen, anyway, I know. I know.” The desperate attempt to be comforting and empathetic bled through his tone; FP’s hardass attitude melting in front of her as it always had.

            She shakes her head again and sighs, removing his hand once more but taking it into her own this time. It’s clear that he’s trying and there’s a piece of her that wants so desperately to melt into it, throw herself back into the arms of the Serpent leader and ignore every pang of loneliness till it goes away. The question of how much self-restraint she has hangs in the air. She watches the rain softly hitting the screen of the window, watches it distort her reflection and FP’s right behind her. The woman looking back is not a teenage girl with a mane of unruly curls and a leather jacket, not a Southsider dreaming of life outside Sunnyside Trailer Park, not an insecure child longing for a rich boy to rescue her. Even so, Alice has a hard time recognizing herself. _They’ve all left me_ , she thinks to herself again, looking at how puffy her eyes are and how disheveled her bun is from being worn three days in a row. It seems unfair to blame Betty for going to college and fulfilling her dream of studying journalism at a prestigious school as New York University, but she finds it in her heart blame people like Hal and Polly for her current state. People who had a choice to stay, to love her, and chose wrong.

            FP nuzzles the crook of her neck. She doesn’t know what’s right in this case.

            “Come to bed.” He squeezes the side of her waist lightly, guiding it back towards the staircase without moving his face away from her own. Nicotine gum and deep fried oil still cling to his skin like cologne. She doesn’t mind as much as she thought she would.

\--

            _Eternity_ , FP thinks, _I could listen to her moan for the rest of eternity_. It feels like a momentous thought, something he would wish he had told her much later but doesn’t; instead, with his head nuzzled in her thighs, he parts her lips and spells the word out with his tongue like a secret vow. She makes soft little gasps, though nothing loud enough for the neighbors to hear to his own chagrin. FP can remember the sounds she made when they were younger: all the groans, the expletives, the pieces of his hair she’d yank all the way out from the root time to time. He can remember bruising, blushing, _passion_ like he hasn’t quite been able to find since.

            “ _Sensitive!_ ” Alice hisses when he sucks down too hard on her clit. “Sensitive.” Tonight is not a night for passion.

            Tonight is not a night where Alice has snuck out of the Cooper house when he knows Jughead is out, nor a midday booty call when she’s grown especially tired of upkeeping her wholesome appearance: in other words, it isn’t a night for being fucked senseless. Instead, FP tries to imagine what women find soft and heartfelt in bed and do his best. He took his time helping her under the covers, turning out the lights, even offering to light a candle which she took with no seriousness and then felt bad when his face dropped a little bit. Now he has his head at the apex of her legs because this is the one thing he knows he can at least _try_ to do correctly.

            He starts her off slowly, trailing kisses down her stomach, hip bones, and lower abdomen before working across her inner thighs and carefully just above her clit. After he’s driven her a little wild with want, he drives his tongue between her lips in slow, up and down movements from top to bottom. The sloppy echoes give him pride. He can feel her walls shaking and contracting, her legs starting to squeeze his head in the way he knows means that she’s getting close. He doesn’t want to finish her off that easily, however, and slows the pace down even more, poking his tongue out to lick the inside folds of her. It doesn’t last long, quickening the pace, before he alternates the fast zig-zag motions with up and down ones and lets her breathing quicken, her nails dig into his hair, waiting for her to finish. After a few more rounds of his, he takes her clit in his mouth and sucks in, swirling his tongue over it simultaneously till she lets out a high pitched whimper and her legs go weak around his neck. Being suffocated in her pussy wouldn’t be the worst way to die though.

            “Fucking hell.” Alice sighs, throwing her head back against a fluffy throw pillow. “Still got it, Jones.”

            He wants to croak out a witty response but decides against it. FP keeps his head buried in her, licking up the small mess she’s made with deliberately slow movements. He keeps going longer than usual, noticing how the sun is beginning to rise now and the room turns pale blue in the light of it. Her hand strokes his head lightly for a second and he gives her inner thigh a nuzzle twice. Taking care of her like this gives him a sense of why people favor domesticity, monogamy. It’s fine enough to bring back some of the regular haunts from the Wyrm every now and again to flip over and have a fine enough time with, but FP would be lying to say it was anything more than that. Hiding under Alice’s royal purple blankets, meanwhile, is type of delicacy that makes him feel brave and scared shitless at the same time. Caring for her, he knows, has only left him high and dry in the end but he knows too that whenever Alice picks up the phone, he will be the first one to answer on the other line. It’s a mess without being as frustrating as one would think.

            He’s about to come up and give her a kiss when he thinks he hears her snore. Waiting a moment, he listens and realizes Alice is definitely fast asleep.

            “Fucking hell.” He whispers, not bothering to stifle a grin any more than he can stifle the fluttering in his chest. He forgets she’s real sometimes, still a damn teenager at heart.  

\--

 

            Alice dreams she’s a life guard again. Her subconscious has landed her back in 1989 (a year she never cared to go return to, thank you) in a bright turquoise, high-hipped, one piece with the tackiest of sequins to spell out R.C.C. At Riverdale Country Club, there were only two binaries to exist in: those who worked or those who made you work. Alice had been just shy of turning seventeen and the only Southsider on the lifeguard staff, a fact not to be overlooked. She still remembers watching her coworkers go swimming with friends on break, chuckling over sushi at the “pocket money” they were earning while Alice sat in the mildew-ridden breakroom alone with her sandwich.

            In the dream, she was still this girl of a tightly wrestled ponytail and a whistle around her neck. She holds that damned bologna sandwich, hearing children splashing in the pool and seeing their mothers lounging in the sun. She can still feel the stickiness of the break room, un-air conditioned to the point where sweat drips at her neck down her chest. A crack of thunder. Suddenly, the bread in her hands molds before her eyes and turns to foaming mush. Dream Alice shouts and sprints out of the room, almost falling into the pool. The patrons turn their chairs at the moment of her entry, sickening grins splayed on their faces. The sound of laughter builds like a war drum, pounding her sense at every angle as the wealthy rise from their deck chairs and surround her. Alice screams again, louder, and her body fills out, her stomach swelling before her eyes. She swiftly can feel Hal’s engagement ring singe around her finger as if made from molten gold.

            “Was it worth it?” A teenage FP has emerged from the crowd of overprivileged zombies, beckoning a finger towards her in his Serpent jacket. “Was it, Ali?”

            She looks down and her legs are stained with blood: it trickles down her legs and pools at her feet where a baby is still attached by an umbilical cord. If she screams again, Alice can’t hear herself. It writhes on the concrete, wailing like a wounded animal. Black curls mat to his little head: Charles.

_“Was it worth it?”_ Fully-grown Hal repeats the question with a shit-eating grin. She turns to look where he emerges in the deep end of the pool, green with murk and if she took one more step, she would land right in it.

            The baby cries on the pavement.

            “Come on, sweetheart.” Hal opens his arms wide, a black hood now shrouding his face. Her heart pounds, alive and in panic as the crowd keeps pushing her closer to the edge. Alice is crying, the tears mixing with the sudden onset of rain. She tries to remember reality, that she chose her fate long ago, but all she can focus on is FP cradling the bloody infant, cooing up at his father. Perhaps there is room to reconsider.

            She feels something pull at her arms and looks down at a young Polly and an even younger Betty.

_“Mom? Was it worth it?”_

            Alice sits up immediately, her forehead soaked in sweat and her eyes sanded with tears. A dream, she tells herself, just a dream. FP is still shaking her by the arms, looking panicked and out of place in her bed. For a split second, she is shocked to see him aged. It passes. She opens her mouth to apologize but begins sobbing again, this time not bothering to suppress it. The middle of her chest hurts; it’s the place where Alice held all of her children at one point in time and now feels especially barren. Seeing the baby in her dream was the first time she had been able to recall his face in years, having repressed it away long ago. She had forced herself not to remember how loudly he had cried coming into the world, how the doctors laid him to her breast and he immediately yanked on one of her blonde tendrils; _this baby knows he is going to be taken away_ , she had thought. Alice leans out of FP’s grasp and cries again. Both Polly and Betty had  softer, more pronounced wails at birth. When placed on their mother, it was Betty who gleamed up at Alice and immediately quieted. _She will be perfect_ , Hal had whispered in her ear. He’d said it with a kiss, but Alice knew by then to take it as a threat. Charles’s memory leaves her feeling more gutted than she has felt in years.

            “What was that?” FP asks, his voice still groggy with sleep. A bird has begun singing and outside is fully fledged with morning.

            “Just a dream.” She shakes her head, wiping her eyes. The words _our baby_ feel wrong in her mouth. “I… Charles was there.”

            “You dream about him?” He shifts onto his side, pulling her back and laying an arm over her waist. FP has a million questions but still has yet to ask, letting them churn in his stomach. Perhaps they instead reside where he keeps the questions he has for Gladys, JB, and now Jughead; the wonderings about why they left him that he’s too afraid to know the answer to. It makes him want to drink, so FP thinks it better than to even graze that surface.

            “No,” she says to the ceiling, “I made a career not thinking about him.” She sighs and rolls over to her other side, away from FP. She doesn’t admit the sick feeling she gets at the sight of a dark haired baby boy or a father playing with his son. These feelings she learned to package and set aside, taking instead to a life of publishing slander about the Southside and worrying whether her daughters had skirts that covered their kneecaps. The thought of her first child orbits her world without touching the ground

            He doesn’t know what to say again, but FP snakes his arm tighter around her waist even so. Kisses her once, twice, three times on the neck until Alice finally melts into his chest. The birds won’t stop singing and he realizes he doesn’t know when it stopped raining.

\--

            The spot beside him is empty when FP finally arises from his second slumber. He pauses, putting his face to her pillow and relishing in the comfort of it. Her mattress feels new and doesn’t sag in the middle like his does, and her sheets smell fresh with lavender. Delicacy.

            Pans clank together loudly downstairs, the sound of butter sizzling shortly after: Alice is making breakfast. His mouth waters.

            “Hi, honey!” He hears Alice exclaim when he’s almost reached the staircase and grins before she continues, “I’m so glad to hear from you! I knew you guys would make it safe, you know I just worry. You’re already there, then? Send pictures—”

            FP would be lying if he said his stomach didn’t drop a bit when he realizes she was on the phone with Betty. Still, he feels relief wash over him to find out that the kids had made it safely. He wonders if Jug planned on calling him later, or if perhaps he should call first—one of those parenting questions he feels guilty for not knowing the answer to by now. He saunters down the rest of the stairs and takes a seat at the counter, watching Alice buzz around the room without direction, holding her phone with great care. Her housecoat is open to reveal a loose fitting tank top and a simple looking pair of yoga pants that would likely cost him more than a day’s paycheck. Alice’s hair falls at her shoulders and he can smell the lavender of her soap amidst the cooking bacon; it’s refreshing to see that she’s showered and appearing more put together.

            “Is Jughead there?” Alice looks FP in the eyes, glitteringly green now that she’s talking to her daughter. “Oh, no reason, I just wanted to ask. Will you help him move into his dorm when you two are done at yours?... Good, that’s good, Betty.”

            She slides him a plate across the counter, overfilling with eggs, sausage, two pieces of toast, and half an orange served with a wink. He’d go to kiss her if she didn’t look so utterly joyful, still flitting around the kitchen like Tinker Bell. The feeling rises in his stomach again, the one he’s been terrified to name ever since they were young. He shoves a whole sausage patty in his mouth to choke it down.

            “Oh, I understand,” her tone dips a bit, her eyes falling flat, “I’m sure you have a lot to unpack. Thank you for calling, honey. I love you. Goodbye, be safe—”

            “They make it okay?” He asks somewhat gruffly, still swallowing his breakfast.

            Alice nods, “Jughead drove all night so Betty could sleep, they got into the city earlier this morning. How are the eggs?”

            “Stellar,” he grins with all his teeth, “as always, Ali. Thank you.”

            He finishes his plate and makes his way over to where she is, pinning her to the sink from behind again. _Thank you_ , he keeps whispering while pressing kisses to her neck and shoulders, laughing with her as she tries to swat him with the dish rag. A rough hand lightly cupping her cheek, she meets his lips with a short peck. _The dishes,_ she says, always the dishes. His hands glide down her sides, squeezing her hips close to his boxers.

            “Come back to bed,” he murmurs in her ear, “and I won’t let you fall asleep this time.”

            She laughs again, twisting a hand around his hair, “I can’t keep sleeping with you to avoid everything in my life, FP.”

            His body freezes, taken aback. Though said semi-playfully, her words sink in and it takes him a moment to process what she means. When he thinks about it, it makes sense: Every time Alice falls, FP holds out his arms to catch her without a second thought. As a child, she ran away to his place every day to eat his cereal and try to beat him up. As a teenager, she taught him how to shotgun a beer in under seven seconds, he taught her how to roll joints, and when that got boring, they taught each other how to fuck the other one into oblivion. Now as adults, she’d run away from her lifeless, loveless marriage, and he was always there to throw his gum out the door and carry her into his worn-out mattress. It occurs to him that he might not know how _not_ to try and save her, how to stop yearning to break her own fall. Confusion etches itself across his face, his lips parted and his eyebrows furrowing together. “What do you want me to do, Alice?” He stammers on her name, feeling three words rise in his chest but unaccompanied by courage to say them. “I—"

            “I know you do.” She’s still smiling but her face is softer, more understanding. She moves her hands to his cheeks to feel the stubble of the beard he never quite grows fully. “Go home and call your son, I’m sure he’d appreciate it right now.”

            It’s the first time Alice has kissed him all night: sweetly, pulling back to look at him with her eyes still sparkling. Something sinks in his chest.

            “Thank you for coming over, FP.” She smiles again and strokes his cheek before gesturing to his Pop’s outfit flung over one of the remaining living room chairs. “I made sure it’s all there for you.”

            “Thanks, Alice.” He squeezes her hand flatly and goes to slip on his white trousers, leaving the button up open overtop his undershirt. It’s almost as if an invisible tail hangs between his legs as he makes it to the front door.

            “FP?”

            He stops to turn around. There she is, holding his Serpent jacket out for him to slip his arms through. God, his stomach twists. _God_ , he loves her _._

            He smiles, an honest one with his eyes holding her’s. “Thank you, Ali.”

            “And don’t forget to call him!” Alice hurries him out the door like an early morning walk of shame, despite the sun being high with afternoon glow.

            The wind in his hair, the leather against his back reflecting the sun, FP makes the trek back to Sunnyside with a lightness in his mood. Say what she wants, he knows Ali will make her way back around. She always does.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time posting on AO3, squee! Please let me know what you guys think. Thank you for reading!


End file.
